UNC professor joins 5 others in Blue Origin trip to space on Tuesday

By CNN Newsource

Published March 28, 2022 10:42 AM

By Maggie Brown

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina (WRAL) — A Blue Origin space craft will launch on Tuesday afternoon with a North Carolina native inside.

Jim Kitchen, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, won a trip to space through a Shift4Shops giveaway.

Blue Origin is a company founded by businessman Jeff Bezos with a goal to bring ordinary people into space for tourism.

During Kitchen’s time in college, he started a company promoting low Earth orbit space trips, according to Blue Origin’s website. A mission patch that all six crew members will wear Tuesday features an orbital ring as a call back to Kitchen’s dedication to space tourism.

Along with being an entrepreneur, Kitchen is a world traveler and has visited all 193 United Nations-recognized countries.

Blue Origin’s flight of New Shepard will take off at 9:20 a.m. Tuesday from a launch site in Texas.

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